Top 200 Kate Elizabeth Russell Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “What wrong?” he asks.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

152. “Driven toward it, toward him, I was the kind of girl that isn’t supposed to exist: one eager to hurl herself into the path of a pedophile.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

153. “Pathetically in love with you.” As soon as he says this, I become someone somebody else is in love with, and not just some dumb boy my own age but a man who has already lived an entire life, who has done and seen so much and still thinks I’m worthy of his love. I feel forced over a threshold, thrust out of my ordinary life into a place where it’s possible for grown men to be so pathetically in love with me they fall at my feet.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

154. “There’s a photo of him onstage accepting the plaque, a big grin on his face, white teeth shining through black beard. I don’t recognize his shoes and his hair is shorter than I’ve ever seen it. Embarrassment creeps up my spine as I realize he probably wasn’t thinking about me at all in that moment. There isn’t a single moment when I’m not thinking about him.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

155. “How long were you going to stand there before you said something?”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

156. “At the time, I thought a man being wounded like that was romantic. Looking back, the whole thing was just deranged.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

157. “It propels me forward, the epitome of asking for it.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

158. “Putting in the Seed,” and tells us to read this one.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

159. “That means something.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

160. “He’ll never meet you,” I say. It’s a hard truth, carrying within it grief and joy.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

161. “I hang up my work suit, take off my makeup, smoke a bowl in bed, and turn off the light. Self-control.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

162. “Think of all the thoughtless pain we inflict. A mosquito on your arm; you don’t even hesitate to smack it dead.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

163. “It’s possible he doesn’t want to see me ever again; maybe that was his goal when he had me sent away, to thrust me out of his life along with all the life-ruining repercussions I embody.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

164. “Even though I’m not supposed to, I spend most of my time reading charts.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

165. “You were so brave then, more a warrior than a girl. You were my own Joan of Arc, refusing to give in even as the flames licked your feet. Does that bravery exist in you still?”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

166. “I don’t feel forced, and I know I have the power to say no, but that isn’t the same as being in charge. But maybe he has to believe that. Maybe there’s a whole list of things he has to believe.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

167. “I barely opened my mouth and brought us to the brink of disaster.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

168. “If you want to talk about luck,” I countered, “try being fifteen and having your soul mate be some old guy.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

169. “Can I ask what’s upsetting you?” I take a breath, try to work out the words, but after a moment I shake my head. “It’s too big to explain,” I say. Because it’s about more than my poem being bad, or that I can’t pick a study spot without exhausting myself. It’s a darker feeling, a fear of there being something wrong with me that I won’t ever be able to fix.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

170. “Maybe it hurts because it might be true. Maybe I wasn’t loved enough. Maybe that lack of love shaped the loneliness he saw in me.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

171. “It’s the type of novel that asks the reader to relinquish control. You have to experience it rather than try to understand it.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

172. “I can take care of myself. Look at me – I’m ok. I’m fine.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

173. “I have power, power to make it happen, power over him. I was an idiot for not realizing this sooner.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

174. “On my way out of her office, I ask, “Did you know he married one of his students?” At first, I think I’ve dropped a bomb on her. Then she nods. Yes, she knows. She lifts her hands, a gesture of helplessness. “It happens sometimes,” she says.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

175. “Maybe you’ll break me,” I say. “Impossible.” “Why impossible?” “Because that isn’t how these stories end,” he says. “Why does it have to end at all?”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

176. “How easy it is to be tricked into building a narrative out of air. Out of nothing.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

177. “Alguma coisa que a gente escreve algum dia fica pronta?”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

178. “It’s a darker feeling, a fear of there being something wrong with me that I won’t ever be able to fix.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

179. “Hij liet me mezelf zien zoals hij me zag, een meisje met de kracht om met haar uit de as te rijzen en hem als lucht te verslinden.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

180. “First love is so special,” she says. “You’ll never forget it.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

181. “What about you? Look at you. Aren’t you ok? You certainly look ok. You look beautiful.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

182. “I’m sorry, Vanessa,” he says. “Though I know that might be a useless thing to hear. I’m just so sorry.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

183. “I just really need it to be a love story.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

184. “Strange to think that for them it’s just another Friday night, how easily their ordinary lives go on, running parallel to my own.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

185. “Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it?” I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide-open empathy. “It’s my life,” I say. “This has been my whole life.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

186. “A few days ago he asked what I like to eat, said he wanted to have my favorites on hand, and he shows me the three pints of expensive ice cream in the freezer, a six-pack of Cherry Coke in the fridge, two big bags of potato chips on the counter.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

187. “It’s easy to pinpoint when it all started, that moment of walking into his sun-soaked classroom and feeling his eyes drink me in for the first time, but it’s harder to know when it ended, if it really ended at all. I think it stopped when I was twenty-two, when he said he needed to get himself together and couldn’t live a decent life while I was within reach, but for the past decade there have been late-night calls, him and me reliving the past, worrying the wound we both refuse to let heal.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

188. “So when my mother asks me to forgive her, I say, “Of course I do.“I don’t tell her again that she couldn’t have stopped it, that it wasn’t her fault and that she didn’t deserve it. I swallow those words instead. Maybe somewhere deep in my belly, they’ll take root and grow.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

189. “He reaches down then and opens his bottom desk drawer, pulls out a book, and my ears prick like a dog’s. Pavlovian – we learned about that in my psychology elective last spring.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

190. “This time of year just makes me feel nuts. Like I’m running out of time or something. Like I’m wasting my life.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

191. “I feel forced over a threshold, thrust out of my ordinary life into a place where it’s possible for grown men to be so pathetically in love with me they fall at my feet.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

192. “Maybe that’s what this has always been about – not wanting these men but wanting to be them.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

193. “While they walk across campus, earthbound and ordinary, I soar, trailing a maple-red comet tail.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

194. “There’s nothing stopping him from reaching in and grabbing whatever he wants. I’m special. I’m special. I’m special.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

195. “I’m tired of him asking me for this, his insatiable need for reassurance. No, I’m not angry. Yes, I forgive you. Yes, I want this. No, I don’t think you’re a monster.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

196. “Someone so stuck in her own brain, she turns unwilling bystanders into ghosts.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

197. “She looks up at me then, her eyes two blue pools. “What could we have done? We were just girls.” I know what she means – not that we were helpless by choice, but that the world forced us to be.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

198. “I even do laundry on a regular basis and don’t let it get to the point where I have to wear bikini bottoms as underwear.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

199. “The excuses we make for them are outrageous, but they’re nothing compared with the ones we make for ourselves.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

200. “Does he really believe he’d ever go to prison, a Harvard-educated, well-spoken white man?”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell